Polka · Boy · Enjoys · Dairy · Products

I'm deep in the middle of packing for the big move, but I'm so incensed by something I just heard that I have to jump onto the system of tubes to register my disgust throughout the world. I'm listening to this NPR podcast, the subject du jour is movies, and one of the guests is J.J. Murphy, film professor (parenthetically [note parentheses], I took a class with him about 20 years ago), talking about the greatness of Fargo.

At one point in this interview, they talk about the great scene in which Marge goes to visit an old high school friend, Mike Yanagita. I thought, "Oh no, I hope he doesn't start in with that thing everyone always says about that scene, about how it appears to have no purpose in the movie." And sure enough, HE TALKS ABOUT HOW THAT SCENE HAS NO PURPOSE IN THE MOVIE, other than character development for Marge. You'd think that a film prof, one who actually wrote a frickin' book (partially) about the movie, would have actually caught something like this. Granted, it's subtle, but a lot of critics and regular folks picked up on this, so it's not like trying to figure out the end of 2001 or anything.

Just to set the record straight, this is the reason the scene is there. Earlier in the movie, Marge goes to visit Jerry (Bill Macy) the crooked car dealer, who feeds her a line of bullshit which Marge accepts at face value. At lunch with Mike Yanagita, Mike tells her a sob story about his wife dying, which Marge also accepts at face value. Later, though, Marge finds out from another classmate that Mike's story is complete bullshit. That discovery is pivotal for her character and the film, because it's what jars her out of her complacent, small-town mindset and makes her realize that she's been too trusting. Right after that she goes back to Jerry and questions him again.

I wonder why people miss the meaning of that scene. Maybe because it's so utterly weird that it sort of scrambles your brain during the crucial minutes that communicate the reason for its existence. Or maybe there's some assumption we make about Marge or a police protagonist, so we don't expect that there would need to be some motivation for Marge to have second thoughts about Jerry. I don't know.

Murphy has a different but interesting interpretation of the film, pointing out that Marge doesn't tell her husband about Mike, and that she gets dressed up all fancy for her lunch. I guess the suggestion is that there's something vaguely illicit about her own motivations about seeing him? I think it's a stretch, but interesting to consider. Maybe when she finds out the truth about Mike, it makes her also realize something about her own self-deception, that just underscores her realization that the world isn't as nice as she's always assumed? I don't know.

Anyway, outrage!

OK! I'm home, I've had two Irish car bombs in a row, and I'm ready to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk about FAMOUS 'ARRY POTTER.

( Entry under a cut in case thine sensitive eyes happen to brush up against nasty old spoilers. )

I want to continue, but Mrs. B is handing me pieces of unbelievably delicious cheese and I have to deal with this situation.

Ah well. Anything I have to say about this book is complicated by the fact that I have about 5 minutes a day to write anything, so I'll just say that my first thought on finishing was that the book was written with integrity.

Also, can I just say that shit like this just makes me so tired. Is there anything more tedious, at this late date, than yet another heaping helping of "wot's all this then?" anti-Potter gasbagging? As Woody said, these yutzes prove that you can be absolutely brilliant and have no idea what's going on.

Mrs. B is out of town for a few days, visiting her family, so I'm here all by myself. And you know what they say about cats being away...and what mice do in their absence...oh yes indeed. While I'm out from under the watchful eye of the missus, I am indulging in every husband's most forbidden fantasy. You know what I'm talking about, gentlemen. That's right: sitting around the house in my underwear, eating Slim Jims and watching cheesy horror flicks. Awwww yeeeahhh.

So, last night and tonight I watched Hostel and Hostel II. Don't ask me how I was watching Hostel II at home, tee hee! Uh, yeah. Anyway, I was surprised to find that I actually liked Hostel. As you probably know, it's about some obnoxious American dudes (and one Icelander) who go to Slovakia looking for hot, morally negotiable babes, and end up as hapless victims in Teh Most Dangerousest Game Evar -- rich bastards paying thousands of dollars for the privilege of torturing a human being! I feel bad that I'm not watching something more edifying, something about living, loving, and learning. Instead, I'm watching a movie about dying, hating, and fearing!

Well, Hostel is genius because it makes fun of stupid Ugly Americans and vicariously offers righteous punishment of said Ugly Americanism, but at the same time, stupid Ugly Americans in the audience will totally dig the cah-razy antics of the Ugly Americans in this movie. So director Eli Roth basically manages to have his cake and blowtorch it, too.

Hostel II was a disappointment by comparison. In some ways it's a good sequel, in that it shakes up the formula somewhat (female protags instead of male) and expands the world introduced in the first film (you get to see more of how the operation works and the kind of person who actually pays for the privilege of brutalizing and murdering another human being). But I think that's also why the movie sucks, because it sets up this premise that's so ripe for all kinds of artistic and political and social commentary, and never really does anything with it. To me, the most aggravating films are the ones that are obviously aiming for some level of quality, but fall short, and for petty reasons. Hostel II is great potential wasted in favor of cheap exploitation and easy shocks.

Also, any horror film, esp. a sequel, that opens with a horrific scene that turns out to be a dream, should be taken into an empty field and shot. Of course, the distributor will then have to be compensated for the damage to the reel of film, but the point will have been made.

What I liked about these Hostel flicks is how they take the standard slasher-flick template and mix in elements from Grimm fairy tales, Hammer horror films of the 60s/70s, bloody historical figures like Elizabeth Bathory and Gilles de Rais, and all those action movies featuring menacing Eastern European gangsters. Plus it sort of grooves on the subliminal fear that many people (well, okay, me) have of the unfamiliar and scary sounding ex-Soviet countries. These movies are to "off-brand" European tourist destinations what Jaws was to the ocean.

I think the "torture porn" accusations are a little over the top, personally, except insofar as they apply to many other flicks throughout horror history. The horror genre exists because of people's fascination with the extremes of human behavior. And it's interesting that the films deal with the notion of aristocrats using their money and position to indulge their worst impulses at the expense of common folk, because I think that is totally where the zeitgeist is right now.

Good Lord Slim Jims are delicious.

I was genuinely shocked and surprised at how much Transformers bored my tits off. I was psyched to see this movie. Michael Bay + Giant Robots, what could go wrong? And really, nothing. It's exactly the kind of movie you'd expect from Michael Bay, a giant robot story, and umpteen million dollars. It was meticulously crafted and flawlessly executed. Dazzling effects and pulse-pounding action. And it bored my tits off.

I almost never fall asleep during a movie, but I nodded off during the entire climactic big-action section. My mind would wander and suddenly I'd be dreaming. About grocery lists!

The same thing happened during the climactic big-action section of Bay's last film, The Island. Maybe I'm just not into the whole "mechanical stuff blowing up real good" thing anymore. Maybe what I really want is movies about living, loving, and learning.

Speaking of which, the best part of the movie for me was that Mrs. B was with me, and she was weirded out by the fact that she was one of a handful of women in the audience, and I said, now you know how I felt when we saw Pride and Prejudice.

A fascinating essay by thinkin' feller Steven Pinker, about how, contrary to our modern perspective, humankind has become less bloodthirsty over the years, as a result of civilization.

Yikes:

In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.

One of the most interesting sections of the essay is thinkin' feller Peter Singer's "empathy escalator" explanation for the increase in the peace. Polka Boy says check it out.

1. I guess there are worse ways to wake up in the middle of the night, but waking up from being assaulted by the stench of fresh cat shit, then lying in bed immersed in a miasma of room-filling Katzescheiße until I'm finally forced to get up and leave the room lest I add the stench of fresh human vomit to the mix, is right up there in my personal Shitty (heh) Ways to Wake Up Hall of Shame.

1a. One worse way to wake up, probably, would be if you were woken up by the smell of shit, but that smell was coming from your own underpants...because you crapped yourself in the night! Ha ha ha. Also, you have diarrhea.

1b. Even worse would be if your house/building collapsed on top of you as you slept, killing you instantly. Although I guess you wouldn't actually be woken up so much as just killed in your sleep.

1c. Upon deeper reflection, there are probably at least a few hundred worse ways to wake up, but you have to admit that feline fecal odor is way up there.

2. I seem to have a pretty acute sense of smell these days. I think it kicked in when I started using Neilmed Sinus Rinse regularly. Ever since then I've been smelling everything. Everything! I'm like that guy in Perfume, or maybe more like that guy in Silence of the Lambs who claims to be able to smell Jodie Foster's hoo-ha. Now, you might be thinking, wow, what an amazing gift, I hope he uses his super power for good and not for evil, like informing complete strangers that he can smell their hoo-has. But in reality it's like in movies and TV shows where someone has the power to read people's thoughts but it drives him/her crazy because of hearing all those crazy thoughts all at once. If you think about it, only maybe 10% of the smellable things in this world actually smell good. Everything else just stinks. What I notice most often is that I can smell people's shoes and feet. I don't know if this smell thing has something to do with Asperger's or not, but it seems that perpetually blocked up sinuses were the only thing protecting me from total instankity!

3. I was going to write a bunch of stuff about an entertaining flamewar between horror/culinary/LiveJournal author Poppy Z. Brite and one of her readers, but I'll just link to it instead. Something about how the days when literary celebs were remote, inaccessible figures of mystery seem to be coming to an end.

4. The bedroom probably doesn't smell like cat poop anymore, so I'm heading back to bed.

5. Actually, I have to get ready for work now. Crap!

1. H and I both got sicker'n heck over the Christmas holidays, and are still in recovery mode. One of the many, many things I hate about these illnesses that drag on and on is losing all sense of self. Was there ever a time when I didn't have coughing fits every five minutes? Is there any way to feel except disconnected and perpetually exhausted? WILL THERE EVER BE A RAINBOW???

2. I'm back on Wellbutrin. Oddly, it was being sick, I think, that led me back to it. That feeling of not-me-ness just made me think about how gradually increasingly not-me I've been getting over the past year. I stopped the Wellbutrin originally because it seemed like it had pooped out. I was taking it every day but it wasn't helping. But these things are subtle. It's hard to tell when it's working, and when you stop, it takes a while to realize that, yeah, it was working and you should probably start taking it again.

On the other hand, I took my first dose last night and holy crap. I felt it hit shortly after going to bed. H had taken some, too, and we just started talking and talking like we couldn't stop talking. I'm not sure exactly what this stuff does, but it does something.

3. I'm not writing (back) to people like I should be and I feel bad about that. Correspondence is so difficult lately. For some reason, it's easier to post entries to my blog(s) than it is to write a simple "hello" note to a friend. It ought to be easier to come back from the dead but it isn't.

4. Barf!

Won't you ever come back to me?
I haven't got what it takes to wait and see.

• • •

Tonight I didn't do a damn thing except watch TV and drink beer. It was the most normal I've felt in weeks. I made a quick dinner of leftovers, ate it, and plunked myself down to watch one of the greatest movies ever made.

Do I need to even tell you what the movie was? Because the phrase "one of the greatest movies ever made" should immediately call to mind a short list of timeless classics:

The Godfather (Parts I & II only)
Citizen Kane
Touch of Evil
Casablanca
Ran
The Apartment
Double Indemnity
Bad Boys II

That's right beyotch -- BAD BOYS 4 LIFE.

I'm kind of lonely in my assessment of this classic film, but I think history will vindicate me, and of course the misunderstood genius of Michael Bay. Except for Pearl Harbor omg that sucked.

Anyway, it felt good to just goof off for an evening. I think I got a little of my mojo back.

Just about a week and a day from now I shall be wed. No cold feet here. Just really looking forward to it.

I wish you could see Miss H the way I see her, and understand the source of my joy at the impending union. I can't begin to explain it without resorting to bland clichés.

In my 9th grade Spanish class I found a worn paperback of Frank Herbert's Dune underneath my seat. I didn't know anything about the book, but it looked interesting, with the giant sandworm on the cover, so I gave it a spin. It was incredible. I had never read anything quite like it before in my entire young life. And I was sad to reach the end of it. That's when I discovered that Dune wasn't a single book -- it was an entire series! Not only was there Dune, but there were two more of these novels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I couldn't believe it. It was a sweet, sweet surprise, during a time in my life when sweetness of any kind was hard to come by.

That's how I feel when I think about marrying Miss H. I've already read this incredible book, that I want to read again and again because I'm always finding something new and exciting in it, and it turns out that there is a whole series of books that pick up right after this first one. And it's like Book 2 in the series is on order from Amazon, due to arrive next Saturday, and every day I'm going to the UPS site with my tracking number, keeping tabs on where it's at on its way to me.

Dang, I knew I should have just sprung for the express shipping.

I'm not writing all that much about my adventures in the dry cleaning biz, mostly because I'm not sure how excited y'all are to read every morning about removing bodily secretions from clothing. And if you are excited, you're either a dry cleaner or...I so very much don't want to know.

Yesterday, though, was kind of interesting. I had a surprise visit from a man I'll call "Mr. Phil." Mr. Phil is this 81-year-old Italian-American who was in the dry cleaning biz for over 40 years. He's retired now, and he walks the earth (yes, like Caine from Kung Fu) visiting fledgling dry cleaners and instructing them in the ways of the steam gun and the spotting board. He's like the Pai Mei of dry cleaning, only nicer.

Mr. Phil came by the shop at the request of my mother, and in the course of one all-too-brief hour transformed me from rank amateur to budding professional. Among the pearls of dry cleaning wisdom:

(1) Any stain that comes from the earth (wine, coffee, etc.) is a TANNIN stain.

(2) Any stain that comes from the body (sweat, urine, etc.) is a PROTEIN stain.

(3) Water is the deadliest enemy of the dry cleaning machine.

There was more, but much of it is secret and the dry cleaning guild would probably kill me if I revealed those secrets here. Tomorrow I'd be found stuffed into a dry cleaning machine, dead, my clothes immaculately cleaned and pressed. Suffice it to say that I am now capable of removing up to 95% of all stains.

Mr. Phil said I could call on him at any time for help. My hope is that I can someday be apprenticed to Mr. Phil, and that when I have mastered the cleaning arts he will bequeath me his steam gun, which once belonged to the dry cleaner of Hattori Hanzo himself.

It's late and I need to hit the sack, but a thought, an old and not very original but very true (to me) and meaningful (to me) thought occurred to me earlier, and I have to write it down before I forget it.

WE ARE HERE TO TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER.

I need to remember this and not forget it when I'm tired and grouchy and the sight of another human being makes me cringe. We are here to take care of each other. Not to take from each other, or to "care" by controlling each other. Or, Lordy, "take care of" in the Pulp Fiction sense. No no!

There is no one in the world who does not want to be cared for or to be taken care of in some way. What an amazing thought!

OK good night.

1. You know what I think is really funny, is when a police car has its siren on, but instead of one long siren blast they do a couple of little siren poots, like "bwoot! bwoot!" I guess it's not as funny if you're being pulled over, though.

2. What is with these skirts that have some kind of panty or something sewn into them? I have never seen this before. I'm not against them or anything, but what I am against is that women are apparently wearing them in lieu of, instead of as a supplement to, their regular undergarment. I think you know where I'm going with this. Not good.

3. On the plus side, people haven't been urinating on their clothes as much this week, which is nice.

Tonight is the first night in about three weeks that I've just come straight home from work and...that's it, I just came straight home from work. No working late, no errands, no shopping. I came home, took a bath, tidied up, ate some dinner. I actually felt halfway normal, it was weird. But in a normal way.

Speaking of weird, something odd I've noticed about Las Vegas is that people here are incredibly chatty compared to people in Madison or Seattle. I was thinking back over the interactions (mostly with cashiers) I've had in the past three weeks, and I can only think of maybe two or three out of a dozen or more where the person didn't engage me in some kind of conversation. People seem to really like to talk, even the ones who aren't Las Vegas natives. The other night I got some gas, and when I went inside to pay the guy, he started talking about how the pumps got hit with lightning the day before.

"Really, wow," I said, on my way out the door.

"Yeah, it was pretty weird," he went on, "I don't know why it didn't set the pumps on fire, you'd think it would just blow everything up. Anyway that's why the pumps are kind of messed up, because of the lightning hitting the pumps. It was--"

"Yeah, that's crazy."

All this chattiness reminds me of how much of my life I spend in autopilot. Whenever a cashier says something not directly related to our transaction, I'm caught off guard and don't know quite how to respond. I'm not in "small talk" mode so it takes me a while to change gears.

Still, as introverted and antisocial as I am, I don't mind the chattiness. I'm not sure what motivates it, exactly, but people sure seem curious about each other. I kinda like it because it's one of the things that makes the city seem less impersonal and cruel. People seem mostly laid back and relaxed -- even the crazy-ass drivers don't bother me, because they don't seem actively hostile...they just like to drive real fast. I think this quality is one that is going to fade out quickly as the city continues its phenomenal growth, so I guess I should cherish it while it lasts.

I moved all my stuff into the apartment last night. I've been staying at my parents' place, which is nice (free meals), but Merlin (dog) has been super neurotic and weird since the move and he's getting to be a bit much (poop on the sofa) for my parents to handle, especially now that my dad's all sick and weak.

Moving out of my parents' house was unexpectedly sad. I was only staying there temporarily, for a couple of weeks, but somehow it felt like when I first moved away from home, after high school. Driving away from their house, I felt all growed up.

Requisite story of apartment woes: On Tuesday night I washed some towels, put them in the dryer, and left. Tip o' the Day: when you're not absolutely sure if your washer and dryer are working properly, don't ever just leave it running and go off for two days. When I went to get the towels on Thursday night, I found the dryer STILL RUNNING. There was a mass of fuzz in the lint trap the size of an adult rabbit. I'm amazed the place didn't burn down.

On the plus side, the towels are UNBELIEVABLY FLUFFY.